London: More Empanadas and Posh Pizza in Brixton

At dinner on Thursday, Limster told me about a place near Borough tube stop that makes Chilean chacarero sandwiches. They're called El Vergel, and I looked them up and discovered that the restaurant serves all sorts of Latin American food. I decided on Friday to check it out.

It took a while to find the place, since it was on a side street and I hadn't written down the address, but I eventually found it. It was a cute cafe, with a long communal table - though I was the only customer at 11 AM.

The table at El Vergel

I had an empanada (Chilean style, though not great because it was microwaved - toaster oven works much better) and also a tea. After a bit, the owner (who is Chilean) came over and talked to me - we chatted for quite a while in both Spanish and English, so that was nice. I'll definitely return in the fall!

Empanada served a/ w nice homemade pebre (bell pepper, onion, cilantro, lemon, spices)

Next I headed down to Brixton, a neighborhood with a big Caribbean community (especially Jamaican and Guyanese) and a famous market. I took a double-decker bus to see the neighborhoods as I traveled. The top front seat of the bus is awesome - you can see everything.

The market was a lot of fun - all sorts of things for sale - produce, fish, meat, clothes, electronics, soap, etc. etc. I took some pictures.

Fish stall

Scotch bonnet peppers seemed to be the primary type of chile sold. I didn't see many other varieties, but maybe there are more during other seasons. Lots of okra.

A street in the market.

Butcher

I roamed around for a while, then ended up having lunch at a pizza place that I had also read about called Franco Manca. It reminded me of something you'd see in the Ferry Building in San Francisco - kinda posh, organic ingredients, simple menu printed in trendy fonts, glass bottled homemade sodas, blah blah blah...except there is no pizza this good at any markets in San Francisco :)

The crust was sourdough (or something) and it tasted a bit like pita bread - but still not bad, especially the crispy bits - the pizzas were baked on order in wood ovens. The sauce was just about perfect to me - bright tomato flavor. Cheese was good too. So it was really a very good pizza and a good value. It seems like this place is doing well since it was quite crowded.

My pizza w/ two types of salami on it. On the left, some homemade ginger lemonade, and on the right, some garlic and chile infused olive oils.

After roaming around Brixton a bit more, I took a bus back up to Elephant and Castle (which gets its name from a pub that used to be there - Nancy and Chris have a book about tube station name origins in their bathroom) then took the tube to King's Cross.

I met Jacob there, who is currently doing a masters at SOAS. He was very nice and showed me the on-campus housing where he lives (and where I applied to live for next year). It's quite new and nice, but I am still not convinced it's where I'll want to live - I still need to figure out whether getting a place independently will make more sense for me. More on this later perhaps...

After this I was tired, so it was time to head back to rest...I think I took a bit of a nap on the tube on the way home.

More soon!